Being Native American: Race, Ethnicity and Mission in Spanish, Mexican and U.S. California (1769-1852)

Bianca Brigidi
History
UC Santa Barbara

My research looks at California during the Spanish, Mexican and U.S periods up to 1852 to explain how and why colonial and post-colonial states used the missionaries as intermediaries to elaborate racialized categories of Indians to meet the state’s political agenda over land. The state’s policies aimed first to sustain the colonial economy of New Spain in the Northern Frontier (1769-1821); secondly to seize profitable land in Alta California province, and place it in the hands of the Mexican state (1821-1848); and lastly to undo land ownership rights given until 1848, in order to redistribute these lands in the hands of U.S. citizens in California. My project explores these racialized state policies for 83 years of sovereign and/or citizenship discourse building and investigates Native American agency and how they responded to these processes as well as how they negotiated land and identity with these imperial and national states.